Communion 2013: It is more about the bling than the blessing?

PARENTS take fag-breaks during First Communion Mass and chatter so loudly the priest falls silent; children are ignorant of how to bless themselves, genuflect or behave in church.

Welcome to Communion 2013.

Society is changing, attitudes to religion have undergone a seismic shift — and schools, which were traditionally tasked with preparing children for First Communion are feeling the difference.

“I’d be very committed to sacramental preparation but in the last number of years my perspective has changed,” says the principal of a large urban primary school who asked not to be named. She firmly believes schools need to step away from the responsibility for preparing young children for the sacraments.

“First Communion is turning into a farce, it’s just an excuse for a party as opposed to celebrating a major religious rite of passage.”

Families facing a First Communion, she now believes, should have to appear before a parish council to formally demonstrate their commitment to the faith.

This, she says would held to ensure people are “dissuaded from making a mockery of the sacrament — because that’s what’s happening.”

So what is happening?

“There’s no such thing as regular Mass attendance in a lot of families, so when it comes to First Communion we have to teach the children from the very beginning — how to bless themselves, how to genuflect, the rite of Mass, the responses, when to stand…” she observes.

“Many kids don’t know how to behave in a church either.

“They’re likely to just strike up a chat with someone behind them — there’s no understanding that this is a sacred space.”

Modern children will openly gobble sweets or even use their mobile phones in church, according to another experienced school head.

“When we were young you treated a church with respect, but that’s all gone. Communion and Confirmation should be a process , they shouldn’t be just stand-alone ‘pageants’.”

When Ger Ryan started teaching in 1978 the sacrament of First Communion was a given for the vast majority of Irish families — but things have changed.

Ryan has seen huge changes in attitudes to religion during his 35-year career in education, 26 of them as principal of the Educate Together school in Cork’s Grattan Street.

“I think it’s a reflection of the way Irish society has changed, its cultural diversity — there is pluralism, now. Back in the seventies and the early eighties, there was no awareness. People just enrolled their child in the school around the corner and got on with it, and were happy in the main. However the influx of foreign nationals woke people up to other belief systems and other cultural identities.”

The multi-denominational school opened in 1987 with 75 pupils, which over the years increased to 240. There are long waiting lists, says Ryan, who points to the lack of space preventing the school from further expansion.

Catholic parents at Grattan Street have to commit to their faith — they organise and pay for private religious instruction in school time.

“The parents have to take it very seriously — they pay for the instruction, which is provided by two retired primary school teachers,” he explains.

Of course, many parents still do take the day seriously — for Terenure mother-of-two Patsy Ryan, a regular Mass attender, her eight-year-old daughter Elodie’s First Communion was a day she will never forget:

“As a mum it stood out as a one-off! Birthdays and Christmases come and go but this was different.

“The Mass was fantastic, the girls sang the most beautiful hymns and took it very seriously. It meant a lot to them.

“The teachers had put a lot of work into it,” she said, adding that to celebrate, there was a big family gathering at the Ryan home.

“We had 17 sitting down to dinner. I did most of it myself and people came and went all day. It was all about the family and the sit-down meal. We toasted Elodie, who is a pupil at Presentation Primary School in Terenure.

“I couldn’t praise the teachers enough for the work they put in, it was just fantastic.”

There are still plenty of mums like Ryan out there say principals, but there are also many parents uninterested in or unwilling to be involved in the run-up to their child’s First Communion.

“I’ve heard of children begging their parents to bring them to Mass — they want to do their First Communion properly, but in many cases there’s no willingness on the parents’ side to do it,” said one school principal.

“Sometimes the grandparents who take it on and bring them to Sunday Mass, but we’ve quite a number of families where attending Mass regularly is not seen as part of the preparation for Communion — all the emphasis is on the dressing-up and the hair and the venue afterwards.

“I’ve seen parents sneaking out the door for a cigarette break during the First Communion Mass.

“I know of one occasion where the priest had to bring a First Communion Mass to a halt because his voice couldn’t be heard — we’d never have encountered this kind of disrespect years ago. It’s gone over the top. We’ve bred a beast we cannot control.”

This casual disrespect, she says, is reflected in the fact that, increasingly, non-Catholic parents are demanding that their children be allowed to “dress up and join in the fun”:

“They want the white dress, the caterers and the party and all that goes with it, for the big day, so they’re prepared to go to the expense of the dress, the shoes, the caterers, everything — even though they’re not Catholic!

“One child came to the church kitted out head-to-toe in First Communion regalia; down to the gloves and the umbrella and sat at the back of the church.

“She was pointed out by a member of the congregation who thought the teachers had made a mistake and forgotten to include her.

“When it was explained that this child was not part of the First Communion class and was not Catholic but had just come into the church all dressed up, the person was absolutely shocked.”

She recalls another anecdote:

“A colleague told me about a parent of another faith who objected vociferously to their child not being included in the First Communion photograph — even though the child was not Catholic and had not made First Communion!

“As Catholic schools we’re trying to be inclusive but you have to draw the line somewhere.

“But we’re living in a society where some people think their children should have everything, so some kids are being reared to feel they should have everything, and being of a different religion doesn’t mean anything when it comes to wanting to dress up and feel part of a religious ritual like First Communion.”